Phil Jones proves himself to be a man of his word (and other news!)

The Climategate 2.0 (CG2) emails, as I had noted (as have others) provide further confirmation and context of that which was discovered in the initial release two years ago.

Many are finding that, well, it’s just as bad as – if not worse than – we thought. By way of example, David Holland, in a guest post at Bishop Hill, provided some additional context for one of the more publicized facts that came out of Climategate 1.0 (CG1), Phil Jones’s May 29/2008 exhortation to his colleague, Michael Mann:

subject: Re: IPCC & FOI

Mike,
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene [Wahl] and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise.
Cheers
Phil

To anyone who has followed the “findings” of the various “enquiries” pursuant to CG1, it would appear that they treated this particular E-mail as if it were a “hot potato” that they kept tossing under the table from one to another! Typically, this was done by asking the wrong questions of the wrong parties (in order to ensure that the right answer would eventually emerge).

Following on the heels of Holland’s post on Bishop Hill, Steve McIntyre expands on The Team’s … uh … contributions to “transparency” in the IPCC process. Included in McIntyre’s account, is a string of correspondence circa June 5/08 which involved Jones and his colleagues Tom Wigley and Ben Santer. Earlier in this particular string, one finds Jones writing [4885.txt]:

An annoying email from yesterday is attached! We will likely be replying in a similar vein to our earlier, saying emails between CLAs and LAs for Ch 6 were in confidence. We have emails from all in Ch 6 to say the group doesn’t want emails made available. We will refer Holland to WG1 in Boulder – knowing that there is likely only one person there keeping things ticking over till the TSU closes – which it may have.

IPCC will have to alter those work guidelines to stop this sort of thing next time. I’ll be raising it with whoever is the next Susan [Solomon]. Decision in early Sept – news is it will be one of Tom Karl, Ram, Brian Hoskins or Thomas Stocker. [emphases added -hro]

[Sidebar: For the record, Stocker got the nod as Co-Chair of Working Group 1 (WG1) for the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (AR5), although how he was chosen (and/or by whom), to the best of my knowledge, remains a mystery.]

And, proving that he is a man of his word, Jones appears to have “raised the matter” with Stocker:

I was in Boulder last week and I spoke to Susan [Solomon – Co-Chair of WG1 for AR4]. We agreed that the only way IPCC can work is the collegiate way it did with AR4.

These people know they are losing (or have lost) on the science. They are now going for the process. All you need to do is to make sure all in AR5 are aware of the process and that they adhere to it. We all did with AR4, but these people read much more into the IPCC procedures. [emphases added -hro]

The “collegiate way” seems to prefigure Muir Russell’s get Jones and Briffa off the hook “team-work sidestep” which also seems to have found its way into the IPCC’s toothless Conflict of Interest “principle based” Guidelines. But I digress …

It would appear that not only are we peons expected to deal with the dictates of “post normal science” – and “redefinitions” of many commonly understood words in the English language (including, it would seem, “transparency”) – but we are also expected to engage in “post normal reading comprehension”, in order to avoid the pitfalls of “read[ing] much more into the IPCC procedures” which, as now we know, they are at liberty to “disappear” as they see fit!

No doubt Donna Laframboise will have to completely rewrite The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert. And the InterAcademy Council (IAC) should be called upon to rewrite its 2010 Report on the Processes and Procedures of the IPCC, because they obviously failed to take into account the manner in which Jones (and presumably others of The Team who are equally dedicated to “the cause”) have determined that the IPCC rules should be read!

And speaking of how things should be read … Stocker (who seems to have his fingers in many IPCC pies and has wasted little time before engaging in “non-policy-prescriptive” pronouncements such as, “the planet might be better off if [gas prices] soared to ‘three to four’ times its current level”) has taken it upon himself to determine how the Aarhus Convention should be read.

The Aarhus Convention grants the public rights regarding access to information, public participation and access to justice, in governmental decision-making processes on matters concerning the local, national and transboundary environment. It focuses on interactions between the public and public authorities.
[…]

The Three Pillars

1. Access to information: any citizen should have the right to get a wide and easy access to environmental information. Public authorities must provide all the information required and collect and disseminate them and in a timely and transparent manner. They can refuse to do it just under particular situations (such as national defence) [10]; [11] UNECE, 2006)

2. Public participation in decision making: the public must be informed over all the relevant projects and it has to have the chance to participate during the decision-making and legislative process. Decision makers can take advantage from people’s knowledge and expertise; this contribution is a strong opportunity to improve the quality of the environmental decisions, outcomes and to guarantee procedural legitimacy [12][13]

3. Access to justice: the public has the right to judicial or administrative recourse procedures in case a Party violates or fails to adhere to environmental law and the convention’s principles. [14][15]

Now, for Stocker’s “expert” opinion regarding how this should be read [2440.txt Stocker to Jones circa May 5/09]:

However, the Arhus Resolution (sic), it seems to me, had another motivation: open access to environmental data associated with damage, spills, pollution; the latter word is mentioned twice -“climate” never. So to take this convention and turn it around appears to me like a perversion.

One important point to consider is whether Arhus really applies to the IPCC activities. In no way are we involved in decision making. We assess and provide scientific information. The decision makers are elsewhere. More than ever need we be aware of this separation! [emphases added -hro]

I suppose it’s possible that Stocker’s “Arhus Resolution” (sic) is different from the 1998 “Aarhus Convention”; but somehow I doubt it. With such a “creative” interpretation – notwithstanding the IPCC’s willingness to permit anyone to self-nominate as an “expert reviewer” – I shall be very surprised if any of the WG reports produced over the next few years will demonstrate anything other than that the Climate Change Game™ continues to be Monopoly: the IPCC version.

OTOH … in the past few years the IPCC seems to have fallen off its pedestal; as I noted the other day, even its ‘primary customer’, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) doesn’t appear to care too much what the IPCC has to say.

Notwithstanding the Norfolk Constabulary’s inexplicable – and very heavy-handed – raid on a U.K. blogger’s “home and castle” last week, there are other indications that the world may yet unfold as it should.

I note with some irony that this incident seems to have generated more far more interest from the MSM (including the CBC!) than the actual release of the CG2 emails on Nov. 22, and I suspect will encourage even more people to begin their own exercises in due diligence regarding the messages of doom and gloom.

Pierre Gosselin advises that in February 2012, a new book by two German scientists will be published that is likely to upset those of the green persuasion. According to Gosselin’s paraphrase, this book – which includes citations from WUWT and ClimateAudit – concludes (as would anyone with an open mind who has read Laframboise’s The Delinquent Teenager …):

“The IPCC is in error, the models are bogus, and the climate catastrophe is not coming. The climate debate has to be started anew.” [emphasis added -hro]

And closer to home, on the heels of Canada’s announced withdrawal from the Kyoto Accord, Dr. Ross McKitrick made a very timely (Dec. 15) presentation to the Canadian Senate Committee on Energy,the Environment and Natural Resources. In concluding his ten-minute testimony, McKitrick noted:

[…] One of the most telling emails in the so-called Climategate 2.0 archive that was just released last month involves one IPCC expert warning another that their efforts to finesse this issue by deceptive trend analysis is a “fools paradise.”

Today you have a chance to hear from a number of serious Canadian scientists about work that they and their colleagues have done that also calls into question aspects of the IPCC party line. The fact that you have learned little of what they are about to tell you does not indicate any deficiencies in the research they or their colleagues have done. Instead it points to the deficiencies in the process that was supposed to have brought this information to your attention long before now. [emphasis added -hro]

[You can watch a replay of the proceedings (fast forward to approx. 20 minutes for start of hearing)]

All in all – despite IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri’s oh-so-humourous pronouncement that skeptics should be given a one-way ticket to outer space – it’s been a good week for those of the climate realist persuasion.